


there's no such thing as vampires, bro

by Tozette



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: Demon Craig, Demon Craig is a good demon dad, Everyone is a cryptid, M/M, Silly, Urban Fantasy, some blood, very silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 11:10:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11667933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: Joseph isn't the only supernatural creature in the cul-de-sac! :0





	there's no such thing as vampires, bro

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sylvaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylvaine/gifts).



> Demon Craig is Sylvaine's idea, I'm just writing him.

***

One hot summer day, River chewed through the teat on her bottle.

I was struggling to breathe following our morning run – I was finally able to get through the whole thirty minutes without slowing to a walk and gagging on my dinner, which was something to celebrate. Generally speaking, when people got to my age they started getting less fit, not more. Craig was good for me like that.

The park was quiet this early in the morning, but if we waited until a more social hour the day would be too hot for running and I’d never be able to peel myself from the couch.

“Aw, man,” sighed Craig, peering down at her adorable little face and her bright red mouth.

She was very cute slurping at her bottle, but if her teeth were big enough to chomp through the teat, should she really even be having milk every meal? I tried to remember when Amanda had moved to solids, but that was, like, eighteen years ago now. My memory didn’t stretch that far. Honestly, sometimes my memory didn’t stretch to my wallet or housekeys…

I peered over at the bottle. Yep. River’d taken the silicone top straight off that thing. Cho-omp. Her gurling face was smeared with whatever the red stuff in there had been – juice? Protein shake? Maybe Craig was trying to wean her onto mashed up smoothie stuff?

An unholy possibility occurred to me. _Please do not let that be marinara sauce._

I decided to pretend that was not in fact possible. Craig had changed, man. My bro was an adult. Responsible. He wouldn’t…

Would he?

_**Please do not let that be marinara sauce.** _

I cleared my throat and came closer, taking deep breaths and trying to let them out slowly. “Should you really still be bottle f…”

I stopped.

That…

I swallowed.

 _I take it back,_ I thought desperately, _please let that be marinara._

“Um,” I said. “Bro?”

Craig looked up at me, then back at the bottle and the red smears on River’s face.

Then he looked back at me. There was something a little strained around his eyes.

“Um,” he said right back.

“Is that–”

“Protein shake,” he said quickly.

I hesitated. It didn’t smell like protein shake, it smelt like – sort of sweet, and – and _rusty._

“Right,” I said slowly.

“Seriously, bro, it’s–”

“Of course it is,” I agreed quickly. Because who would feed their child, you know, straight blood? That would be very creepy.

Except that was definitely blood.

“Aw, man,” muttered Craig. “It’s not what it looks like… exactly. Can we… bro, can we talk about this?”

“Yes,” I said, because, really, yes, _I would like an explanation for this._

“Come on,” he said, taking my arm – and, whoa. Craig, cutting short a workout? It must have been serious.

River didn’t seem any worse for whatever the hell – _blood_ – he’d been giving her. She waved her arm at me and made one of those giggling throat noises. I relaxed a little at that. Whatever was going on, she didn’t seem hurt or sick. That was good, right?

Craig dragged me all the way back to the cul-de-sac, giving Mat a wave and a strained smile when he lifted his hand from where he was just opening up The Coffee Spoon.

Robert glowered suspiciously – and squintily – at us from the back of his pickup. I thought it was early for him until I realised that that was where he, and his good friend Jack, had apparently slept last night. If he’d slept at all. That man was going to do himself in, the poor mad bastard.

Before I could say anything to Craig, he’d pulled me into his house and shut the door. It was dimly lit and very clean inside.

He finally let go of my wrist. I rubbed it. He’d always been pretty strong for his size, but since he’d gotten so buff it was _really_ obvious.

Craig let river down on the floor, where she happily got to her knees. “Bro – I gotta tell you something,” he said.

There was something tight and thick about his voice, and all my thoughts of Robert’s horrific life choices went up in smoke. Craig clearly needed me right now, although what he was about to tell me I couldn’t fathom.

What confession could he possibly have that had anything to do with feeding straight blood to his tiny innocent child? Had he joined a cult? Had he gotten _too_ into the paleo lifestyle? _Had he joined a paleo cult?_

“Craig,” I said slowly, reaching out to grasp his shoulder tightly. “I’m here for you, bro.”

This didn’t seem to calm him in the slightest. His eyes shifted away from my face. “Well. Uh. You’ll be the – second person. Who I tell this to. Um.”

There was a long pause.

 _Come on, dude, the suspense is killing me_. “Whatever it is–”

He flung up one hand and cut me off.

“I’m a demon.”

I blinked.

“What,” I said. If he was working up to a dad joke, it needed to be a really epic one to carry that off. 

He ran his hands through his hair and then stopped. Looked down. Glanced around. Spotting River chewing on the side of the bookcase and getting drool on everything, he swooped down and picked her up.

“This – this was how Smashley found out, too,” he said, and laughed humourlessky. “Didn't you wonder why I got custody of River when she has the twins?”

Well, sure I did, but was that really the sort of question you asked a fellow Dad? No you did not. You waited until they told you themselves, in a moment of frightening, soft focus, situationally appropriate vulnerability that would never, ever be referenced again. That was the Dad way.

We were probably having one of those moments right now, buy it didn’t feel right. It felt too clear, too sharp. River’s happy little mouth was too red.

“Look,” said Craig, and showed me her face.

There was drool. A bit of blood still. Something I was pretty sure was snot. Kids, right?

“Uh…”

He sighed and put his finger in front of River’s cute little face.

Almost automatically, she peeled her lips back and clamped her teeth around Craig’s finger. I could have told him that would happen. Like I said: kids, right?

The teeth were… less predictable. They were a whole lot sharper than I remembered Amanda’s being at that age. And there were a lot of them.

River clutched at Craig’s hand with both of hers, and when she exerted pressure, she broke the skin easily with her tiny… razor sharp… little... monster teeth?

“Uh,” I said cleverly. Was that some kind of medical disorder? I didn't feel like we should immediately jump to demonic explanations for that. "Are you sure..."

I looked back up at Craig. In the relative dimness of the house, his eyes caught the light like a cat's in the dark, large and reflective and... 

I swallowed. Craig blinked once, and a second eyelid closed over his eye, filmy and pale.

"...Dude." 

“The twins are, you know, they have their quirks, but they’re pretty human,” said Craig. “River… She takes after me.”

“That’s…” Wow, that sure was something. Did Craig have teeth like that? "Do you have..." I pointed vaguely to my mouth, unwilling to actually say it. 

"Sometimes."

I stared for a while. Probably too long. To be fair, this was a whole lot more confusing than any other unexpected revelation a friend had sprung on me recently. _So_ much weirder than Hugo’s passion for wrestling, or Damien’s incredibly transparent (and adorable) fear of horror films…

That… this couldn’t be that different, could it? What did being a demon even mean?

Nah. I rebooted. This was _Craig_ , man.

"Okay,” I said. “So you’re a demon."

That was a weird statement.

No! I had to be supportive. The tension was killing me. There was only one thing to do in this situation: "River's still your daughter, right? You’re not a…” I took a deep breath, “… _faux pas_?”

Craig stared at me.

I stared back.

Craig made a noise deep in his throat. “Bro… Did you just–”

“Yes,” I said firmly, lifting my chin.

Amanda may have been at college now, but a true Dad’s job was never really done.

“Yes, I did,” I said proudly.

Craig looked like he was about to cry, which made me kind of uneasy. But then:

“… _Bro_ ,” he said in a choked voice, and launched himself at me. He flung his free arm around my shoulder and crushed me to him as fiercely as a man holding a squirming child can really crush another.

I wrapped my near arm around him, cautious of River’s tiny body between us, and pulled him in.

I hadn’t been this close to Craig in years. It was all back-slapping and manly shoulder punches – the last time I’d been close enough to smell him, we’d been twenty two and in the habit of vomiting on each other on a regular basis. He smelt better now. Earthy. Comfortable. Not at all like sticky messy sweat and unwashed teeshirt, which was probably what I sm–

River bit me. “ _Ow_!”

I jerked away, but River had a mouth on her like a pitbull. If I pulled much harder, she was going to lose me but keep my finger.

“Oh, dude, sorry,” said Craig. Gently he detached my hand from River’s mouth. There must have been some trick to it, because even though she made a singularly upset noise she let me go. “Yeah, she’ll do that. She’s not really old enough to… You should have seen Smash when she tried to breastfeed her…”

I winced. There was a thought. Um, _ouch_?

All right, it was time to bring it home in a sensitive and emotionally supportive manner. “Sooo…” I said slowly. “Demon, huh? What’s that like?”

Very smooth, as usual.

Craig, though, seemed relieved. “Man, I don’t know.”

Say what. “Huh?”

“I mean… What’s it like being human?”

“It’s…” I stopped. “Oh.”

“Right?”

“Right.” I eyed my bloodied finger and wondered if Craig was hiding teeth like that somewhere. “So the blood,” I said, peering at River’s mouth. It was still too red, but she really did not look like hellspawn.

Robert, I thought distantly and a bit numbly, would have been so disappointed. He’d really had his heart set on Joseph being some kind of hellish nightmare creature. Not that I’d tell him, obviously.

“Ah, yeah. It’s mine for now. She’ll stop needing it eventually – it’s kind of like humans with milk. I thought about seeing if she could go without, but… what kind of Dad would I be if I deprived her of essential nutrients when she’s so small?” He shook his head, giving River a positively smitten look. “I can’t do that.”

Right. See? Same old Craig. Or… new Craig. Same new Craig. Old Craig ate instant noodles dry and crunchy. New Craig did intense cardiovascular workouts and wanted to make sure his kids had a nutritionally adequate diet. …Which, for River, happened to include blood. Okay. I could handle this.

He was looking at me now with serious dark eyes. He wasn’t smiling, but the strain was less evident. “You’re taking this a lot better than – than I expected,” he admitted slowly.

I was also pretty impressed with how well I was taking this. If it hadn’t been, well, _Craig_ , I was sure I’d have been less sanguine about the whole demon situation. But it was hard to suddenly be scared of the guy when I remembered him trying to smuggle a puppy into our dorm under his shirt.

“Honestly,” I said reflectively, “I should have guessed after the marinara incident. That was _unholy_.”

“I was new to the concept of smoothies, bro,” he admitted. “And also kind new to the concept of food that wasn’t also, uh, flesh.”

I squinted. “Craig…” I said slowly, “were you also by any chance new to the concepts of cooking, cleaning and bathing?”

He ducked his head, avoiding my eyes but kind of smiling anyway. He fiddled with River’s absurdly tiny little fingers, which seemed to delight her. “The whole, uh, _embodiment_ concept, really.”

Huh.

Now that… “Considering that the rest of us had about twenty years to get used to the idea… bro, you were a natural.”

He looked up. “Really?”

“Really.”

Finally he smiled. “Thanks, bro.”

I offered him a fist to bump, which he accepted in a manly fashion.

“All right, is there anything I’m going to need to know?” I asked. “I mean, murders, human sacrifices-” I raised my eyebrows, “-orgies–?”

He shook his head, although from his smile he wasn’t offended. “Nah, nothing like that. The body’s more or less human. Everything else is…” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You find it when you need it. Sometimes I go for a run to the slaughterhouse instead of the park, you know?”

…That I _sure did not_. But, hey, that was… Okay, no, that was pretty weird. Also, the park was a five minute jog away, and the nearest abbatoir I could think of was more like an hour’s drive away. That seemed like a …very long run. “Oh,” I said, and tried very hard to be cool. “Sure. Okay.”

A thought occurred to me. “Did Smashley…”

Craig winced. “She didn’t know until… See, with the twins, there was never any indication they weren’t human, right?”

Yes, I was following. “Right,” I agreed.

“But then with River… I never told her until River was born. She was born with teeth like this, and then Smash didn’t know until she tried breastfeeding, and…”

Again: ouch.

“I had to tell her then. She wasn’t, uh, quite as accepting as you’ve been.”

Even more: ouch. I could kind of understand it, though. Smashley was cool, but I wasn’t sure I knew anyone quite cool enough to handle finding out their husband wasn’t human three children down the line. Learning that your kids were a different species… might make it harder to participate in a relationship based on trust and communication. I glanced uncertainly at Craig.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, with a tiny wince. “But how do you bring that up with someone?”

He had a point. “So is that why..?”

“Yeah. Though honestly, Smash and I are better as friends. I think we like each other a lot more now, you know?” He rubbed his hand through his hair.

That, I could understand.

“I don’t know, man. Sorry for making this so heavy. We were just going to go for a run!”

I was always glad to have an excuse not to go for a run. Sometimes the amount of exercise Craig participated in seemed, like, physically improbable.

“Hey, bro, if there’s something you need to talk about,” I said firmly, “I’m here for you.”

“Right,” said Craig. His smile was a lot more normal now. “Well, I still have to feed this little monster–”

I followed his gaze down to River, who was starting to become discontent in his arms. Little monster. Right. Cute nickname..?

“You must have questions, though,” he called over his shoulder, heading for the kitchen and then the fridge. From inside he got another bottle, which he took to the microwave. Huh. Microwaved blood.

Did I have questions? Yeah, I had heaps. But… I wasn’t sure how ready I was for the answers, or if Craig was ready to be answering. Maybe keeping it general was better, for now…

“...So are there other surprises I should be thinking about? Do I live next door to a werewolf? Oh! Is Mothman real?”

“Mothman is one hundred per cent fake, bro. And… No, Robert is human.”

There was a weird hesitation there. _Robert_ was human, but… “Seriously, Craig, are there other demons here or something?”

 _Shit_ , I thought, running through the candidates in my head. _Damien. It has to be Damien._ He was too pretty by half, and – jeez, what if he really had been around in the Victorian era? Oh, man.

“Well, there’s Joseph,” Craig said, with a distinct tone of rolling his eyes.

“…What.”

Craig looked over his shoulder again, bouncing River gently as she began to fuss. “What do you mean, what? Bro, he’s not even subtle–”

“I genuinely cannot tell if you’re messing with me right now,” I admitted.

“…Oh,” he said slowly.

“With the well groomed children and the. Uh. The Jesus. And–” uh, what was the nice way to say ‘the tense veneer of upper middle class success thinly masking his inner seething desperation’? Was there a nice way to say that? No, I decided, no there was not. 

“Bro…” said Craig. “I’m not saying all demons are bad, any more than all humans are bad, but…”

“ _Joseph_?”

Craig shrugged one shoulder. The microwave beeped before River got hungry enough to go for the throat. When Craig removed the bottle, I could smell the blood. It was suddenly astonishing that I’d never noticed before.

I watched, bemused, as he tested the temperature of the blood on his wrist. Wouldn’t want little River to burn her tongue, right?

“Okay,” I said finally, feeling a little overwhelmed. “But the others –” All right, Damien. I meant Damien. He was – I liked Damien. He had nice eyes and the sweetest temper and this soft voice and fine hands and improbably perfect calligraphy – and he liked dogs, man. And, you know… graveyard picnics. If there was a single candidate for “not a human” in our cul-de-sac..? Well. Let’s be real.

“There aren’t any other demons,” Craig said.

“…Oddly specific.”

“Well.”

Oh, no. “Damien’s a vampire, isn’t he.”

Craig burst into startled laughter. “ _Damien?_  Dude, the guy’s a vegetarian.”

“Oh.” I… knew that. Because I’d been there when he gently and politely asked the snack bar attendant if the cinema food was vegetarian-friendly. …Which was right before he’d spent two hours scared witless about the hammed up vampires chewing on the scenery. Right. “It… Could be a cover?”

A _really_ good cover.

“I can confirm with absolute certainty that Damien is not a vampire, bro.”

“Or, er, a werewolf, or– or anything else that eats people?” Hey, I’d had some weird revelations today. It seemed worth it to cover my bases.

“Definitely not,” Craig assured me. “Completely committed to the vegetarian lifestyle.”

 _Phew_. I mean. Not that it would be awful if he ate meat, but at least ‘completely committed to the vegetarian lifestyle’ meant he was never going to turn his unholy appetite on _me_ , right?

…If Damien had, um, less literal unholy appetites, that was… different. Definitely. Different. Yes. I would… Yes. _Please, god, yes, I’ve been so good._

“Bro, are you in there?”

“What?” I was in here! Just… Distracted. Little bit. “Yes. I am here. That’s… Where I am.”

Craig looked at me with soft eyes and a smile around the edges of his mouth. He’d got River to suck on the teat of the new bottle, instead of ripping into it with her tiny monster teeth, and her small fussy noises had faded into sounds of contented consumption.

“If you say so,” he said amiably, and didn’t even push. That Craig, what a guy. Demon. Guy. ...guy demon?

I hung around for as long as I could that day, maybe a little too eager to reassure Craig that I wasn’t going to abandon him just because of a little, uh, demonic…ness. It was weird, sure, but I could learn to accept this about my friend.

We spent most of the rest of the day together, relaxing and reminiscing – so many of our college escapades made a completely different kind of sense in light of Craig being a newly-embodied demon with minimal understanding of how to act human.

In hindsight, college kids were really weird. No wonder Craig fit right in.

Eventually, though, night came and I had to leave – there was only so long I could spend rolling a large rubber ball across the floor to River, after all. More importantly, Amanda had insisted I learn how to use the Skype before she left for college – so I had to hurry home or risk missing her video call.

“We’re good, right?” I asked cautiously, as Craig opened his door for me.

“Dude, of course,” he said, and caught me in another one-armed hug. “Bros for life!”

I squeezed back. Despite how unsettling the day’s revelations had been, I was feeling pretty okay about everything. I breezed through my Skype call with Amanda, ate at least half a vegetable for dinner (the tomato on pizza totally counts, okay), and went to bed feeling like – well, that was all weird, but it wasn’t bad or dangerous or really my problem, so I could just avoid thinking about it as much as possible.

 

* * *

 

 

Of course, two days later, I was gardening with Damien (by which I mean he was gardening and I was listening to him talk about gardening and staring helplessly at his hands with an inappropriate degree of interest) when his phone went off unexpectedly.

He jumped at the sound and sliced his thumb on the sharp edge of his pruning shears.

Damien froze like a deer in my headlights before I had even noticed what was wrong. 

He bled pale, faintly greenish blue across the blade. It was... legitimately blue. It actually looked kind of pretty against the flowers. I blinked slowly. 

The phone rang again. 

"Gonna get that?" I asked numbly. I should have tried to help -- the man was _bleeding_. It just -- was a bit of a shock.

Craig... had definitely bled red. 

“Er,” Damien said. His face was whiter than his foundation, which was... pretty damn pale. “I can. ...That is. I.”

There was a long frozen second. His phone rang again. “Please excuse me, I must take this– in, er, in private.”

And he fled into the house.

I looked down to where he’d been. There was a splash of blue blood on the stem of a snapdragon.

That was...

Yeah, it was definitely blue.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, returning with his hand wrapped up in about sixteen layers of cloth, “I completely lost track of time. I really must pick Lucien up right now, right this very moment, so if you don’t mind–”

It wasn’t even one yet. "Damien--"

"--am really terribly sorry, this is unconscionably rude of me--"

He put his hand on my back to propel me faster toward the exit. It was the first time he'd touched me all day. I twitched. 

"Oh! How inappropriate of me, I --" he yanked his hand away like I'd burnt him.

"Damien?"

Somehow, I found myself back on the street, staring up at the gargoyles. Damien closed the door in my face with sufficient force that it vibrated.

He... certainly did not reemerge to collect his child from school - or if he did, he waited for me to leave, which I did eventually. It would be creepy to wait around outside his house and wait for him to come out, right? Right. 

Okay.

So... 

What… had blue blood?

I briefly considered asking Craig, but there was really only one expert on strange and mysterious creatures in our neighbourhood…

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked something let me know in a comment. Otherwise, have a good morning. (Dad tip: stay hydrated.)


End file.
